PENTECOST 7C (PROPER 15) – JULY 15, 2007
Amos 7:7-17; Ps 82; Colossians 1:1-14; Luke 10:25-37
 
The problem with some of the well-known stories of faith is that we tend to hear them with the same kind of ear that the Lawyer testing Jesus hears the great summary of the Law of Moses: “Love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength; and your neighbour as yourself.”  Yes, a lovely sentiment – so true and lofty that it brings to mind the chorus of the angels in heaven.  Now, let me just get in line ahead of that person coming with all those items, or let me buy my next luxury item…and did you get that letter from the church asking for more money..really, what do they do with it all?
 
The story of the Good Samaritan is one that has been so taught in church schools, summer camps and vacation Bible schools, that even an individual with only minimal connection to the things of the Church has it tucked away somewhere in their memory as the ultimate lesson in Christianity.  It is a lovely story about doing good and, for some, the demonstration of why the official church is a waste of time.  We dredge it up and feel most righteous meditating upon the poor traveler who is taken care of by the Samaritan, as is only right.  Then we store it away along with the “who is my neighbour” pencil holder we made once on a rainy day at Camp.   Familiarity and routine are dangerous for the soul.
 
The lawyer knew the law very well.  It was his job.  When he quotes the law to Jesus, he does so perfectly with an answer that he had been taught and knew would be expected from him.  It was the right answer.  He must have been a bit taken aback by Jesus’ quick retort: “You have given the right answer; do this and you will live.”  Was this a challenge to his integrity?   Jesus had turned his complex question about eternal life into an examination of the lawyer’s daily life and actions – bringing heaven to earth.  The question was meant to confound Jesus not the lawyer.  The lawyer is confronted by Jesus’ assertion that the reason his faith has taught him this law so well was not to vaunt his personal righteousness but to govern and shape his life.  It is not an altruism; it actually means something!   So the lawyer tried another diversion.  “Who is my neighbour?”  In a time fraught with arguments of righteousness and with political alliances committing national states to hate and violence against another, this was a loaded question.   Again, if we can move this theological argument back up into the head, perhaps we can escape the embarrassment.  But Jesus crafts a story ending with a question to which there is only one answer that must come from the listener’s mind and heart.  “Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbour to the man…?”  “The one who showed him mercy.”  The lawyer who thought to catch Jesus, has been caught himself.   Sometimes the outsider (the Samaritan - knows better than those on the inside – the lawyer and his fellow religious professionals.  (We on the inside should pay attention to how many times this theme comes up in the Gospel of Luke.)  In this parable, the ones who thought they knew the law and its implications are distracted and preoccupied. The presence of a man beaten and probably dead on the side of the road, sad and terrible as it was, did not impact on them – the priest and the Levite (officials of the Church of their day.) They carried the Law – love God and love your neighbour -  as second nature, perhaps even bound around their arms in obedience and yet felt justified passing this scene of human pain.   The lawyer cannot help but see and yet his conclusions go against what he has been taught and what he must feel in his gut as a faithful Jew.  It cannot be the Samaritan who demonstrates life in the Kingdom of God.  But, in the end – in the courts of God –  it is only action that justifies.    Priest, Levite, Samaritan, lawyer, Christ Church parishioner, Primate of Nigeria, Pope – no righteous identification, no knowledge of the law, no familiarity with the stories of faith, is a ticket to life in the realm of God.  The most ardent evangelical, the most sanctimonious catholic, the most cause supporting liberal passing on by the one needing the mercy of the children of God, passes right on by the kingdom and the entrance to that eternal life which preoccupies the lawyer and every other human being that comes to consciousness of their mortality.
 
Religious people can be funny (and I count myself among that number).  We strive and worry and wring our hands trying to connect with God. Is my prayer sufficient?  Have I given enough?  Have I made amends for all my faults? Some spend their lives moving from one spiritual tradition to another in the hopes that they will find the place where they know they have finally come to the peace that will prepare them for the end.  Pronouncements like the one everyone is talking about this week from the Vatican are really caricatures of the excessive striving in misdirected places of all religious people.  Proclaiming one true Church is another way of answering the lawyer’s question: what must I do to inherit eternal life?  But if Jesus is right – and it is the Christian’s vocation to suppose that he is – we and the Bishop of Rome might do well to watch the works of mercy all around us, particularly from those outside, and do the same.  There we will know eternal life.  The gift of eternity is blatantly exposed in the needs of other human beings.  That is how easy and how challenging these stories of faith are.  No wonder some would like to get rid of Jesus or at least trivialize what he has to say to us.   Are you looking for God?  Are you trying to know God and have faith?  God is there…and there…and here…right now in what you see before you…not in some esoteric future…not in some heaven detached from the Earth.  When you take God in your hands and touch God with your lips in this Eucharistic meal today: that is how close God is and how ready for us to act.
Love God…love your neighbour.
And who is my neighbour?
Which of these three do you think was a neighbour?
The one who showed him mercy.
Go and do likewise.